It is well known that conventional chemotherapy and radiation therapy can result in toxicity to both normalcells and tumor cells, which causes limitations in the application of these therapeutic strategies for cancer control.Novel and effective therapeutic strategies for cancers with no or low toxicity for normal cells are a high priority.Therefore, natural products with anticancer activity have gained more and more attention due to their favorablesafety and efficacy profiles. Pre-clinical and clinical studies have demonstrated that several representative naturalcompounds such as resveratrol, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, curcumin, allicin and ginsenosides have obviousanticancer potential. In this article, we summarize autophagy-associated targeting pathways of such naturalproducts for inducing the death of cancer cells, and discuss the core autophagic pathways involved in cancertreatments. Recent advances in the discovery, evaluation and exploitation of natural compounds as therapeuticagents for cancers will provide references and support in pre-clinical and clinical application of novel naturaldrugs for the treatment of primary and metastatic tumors in the future.